When you think of award ceremonies, the Oscars, BAFTAs, and Golden Globes probably spring to mind. While the Golden Raspberry (Razzies) spoofs the worst movies, there’s an entire underworld of off‑beat honors that celebrate the odd, the humorous, and the downright bizarre. This article rolls out the top 10 bizarre awards you’ve likely never encountered, ranging from deliberately terrible art prizes to contests for the most phallic architecture.
From pun‑filled turnip trophies to a spoon bent by “paranormal” forces, these recognitions prove that humanity can find a reason to applaud almost anything—no matter how quirky or questionable. Dive in and discover the strange side of accolade culture.
Why These Top 10 Bizarre Awards Matter
10 The Turnip Prize
If you ever glance at contemporary art and feel that a five‑year‑old could have produced it, the Turnip Prize will speak to your sense of satire. Born in 1999 as a cheeky jab at the Tate Gallery’s Turner Prize, it rewards deliberately awful, low‑effort modern art. The catalyst was Tracey Emin’s notorious “My Bed”—a disheveled mattress surrounded by stained sheets, discarded condoms, vodka bottles and cigarettes—that had been shortlisted for the Turner Prize that year.
The competition thrives on groan‑worthy puns in both titles and artist names. In 2019, the entry “Bush Fire Down Under” by Fanny Scorcher won: women’s underwear with a charred hole in the front. Back in 2015, Bonksy snagged the prize with “Dismal And,” a hastily drawn sad ampersand on a wooden board. To match the deliberately shoddy entries, the award itself is a turnip impaled on a nail and mounted on a block of wood.
9 Mullet Awards at Mulletfest
Mulletfest, launched in 2018 in Kurri Kurri, Australia, celebrates the iconic “business in the front, party in the back” hairstyle. Founder Laura Johnson, herself a proud mullet‑wearer, created the festival after the town’s aluminum smelter shut down, leaving hundreds unemployed. She said her twin aims were to “bring business to Kurri” and “make people happy.”
The festival’s highlight is its quirky awards, which cover categories such as Everyday, Grubby, Extreme, and Ranga (for red hair). Age brackets range from Junior (0‑3 years) to Vintage (over 50). Each year the event grows, drawing mullet enthusiasts from across the globe. If you sport a mullet with pride, Mulletfest is the place to showcase it.
8 Worst Word/Un‑Word of the Year
The Plain English Foundation’s Worst Word (or phrase) award and Germany’s Un‑Word (Unwort des Jahres) both spotlight the most egregious distortion of clear language each year. The English version began light‑heartedly—KFC’s “goodification” snagged the 2012 prize, while Gwyneth Paltrow’s “conscious uncoupling” earned the 2014 award. Over time, the English prize has adopted a more serious tone, aligning more closely with its German counterpart.
In Germany, a panel of language experts selects the most defamatory and offensive term. The German Language Society originally announced both a Word of the Year and a non‑word, but since 1994 the non‑word is decided independently. Recent selections include 2021’s “pushback,” referring to forcing refugees back over a border without asylum access, and 2017’s “alternative facts” (alternative fakten), which topped both the English and German lists.
7 The World’s Most Phallic Building Contest
Journalist Jonathan Ames famously described Brooklyn’s Williamsburg Bank building in 2003 as “the most obviously phallic building I’ve ever seen.” In response, Cabinet magazine launched a global hunt for the world’s most phallic structure. Readers submitted entries from all corners of the globe, and the magazine’s editors crowned the Ypsilanti Water Tower in Michigan—erected in 1890—as the winner. Locals affectionately dub it the “Brick Dick.” However, the public’s vote favored the Florida State Capitol in Tallahassee, a building whose tall central shaft and twin domes give it a decidedly suggestive silhouette.
The contest highlights how architecture can unintentionally (or intentionally) evoke the male organ, turning everyday civic structures into objects of amusement and debate.
6 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition
Since 1975, Nikon Instruments has run the Small World competition, spotlighting the most striking photographs captured through a microscope. Entries are judged on informational content, originality, and visual beauty, with techniques ranging from phase‑contrast and polarized light to fluorescence, dark‑field, confocal, deconvolution and mixed methods.
The winning images reveal the bizarre and beautiful complexity of the microscopic world. Past top‑20 selections include a fluorescent turtle embryo (2019), a honey‑bee eye dusted with dandelion pollen (2015), and mouse colon cell nuclei (2006). Nikon also runs a Small World in Motion contest for videos and time‑lapse footage captured at the microscopic level.
5 The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year
Self‑explanatory, this award celebrates the most outlandish book title of the year. It originated as a light‑hearted gag at the 1978 Frankfurt Book Fair, and since 1982 The Bookseller magazine has administered it. Initially judged by a panel, the winner is now chosen by public vote on the magazine’s website, with publishers barred from nominating their own titles to keep the competition fair.
The 2021 winner, Roy Schwartz’s “Is Superman Circumcised?”—an academic probe into the Jewish origins of the Man of Steel—prompted the author to quip, “the competition was stiff, but I’m glad I was able to rise to the challenge.” Earlier victors include the delightfully odd “Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop,” “The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories,” and “Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes.”
4 The Bad Sex in Fiction Award
Since 1993, the Literary Review magazine has handed out the Bad Sex in Fiction Award to novels featuring cringe‑worthy, poorly written sex scenes. Explicit erotic fiction is excluded, so E. L. James’s “Fifty Shades of Grey” never qualified. In 2020 the judges paused the award, explaining that the public had already endured “too many bad things” that year to also be exposed to bad sex.
The Independent has compiled many of the most laughable scenes, though not all nominees appreciate the humor. 2004 winner Tom Wolfe’s “I Am Charlotte Simmons” featured the line “slither slither slither slither went the tongue,” prompting Wolfe to comment, “You can lead an English literary wannabe to irony, but you can’t make him get it.” Morrissey’s “List of the Lost” won in 2015 with lines like “the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation,” and the singer advised keeping a “distance” from the prize to avoid “repulsive horrors pulling you down.”
3 The Barbara Dex Award
The Eurovision Song Contest is famed for its eccentric songs and outlandish costumes. While nations cast votes for their favorite tunes (or, let’s be honest, their friends), online fans decide who earns the Barbara Dex Award for the most striking look of the evening. Created in 1997, the award honors Barbara Dex, whose 1993 semi‑transparent dress made her look “like a lampshade” while representing Belgium.
Originally a “worst dressed” accolade, the award now celebrates the most striking outfits. Memorable entries include Lithuania’s 2014 rubber ballerina‑domininatrix look and Croatia’s 2016 tent‑like Japanese kimono, which was dramatically peeled away to reveal a metallic feathered dress. Fans can watch the full performances on the Belgian site Songfestival.be.
2 The Bent Spoon Award
Since 1982, Australian Skeptics—dedicated to scientifically examining pseudoscience and paranormal claims—have presented the Bent Spoon Award to the “perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudoscientific piffle.” The trophy is a spoon, allegedly used at the Last Supper, affixed to a wooden handle said to be from Noah’s Ark, bent by mysterious forces and plated in gold via a lost Atlantean process. Winners must “remove it from our keeping by paranormal means,” a feat no one has achieved.
In 1985 the award went to the Findhorn Foundation, which funded self‑proclaimed psychic dentist Willard Fuller, who claimed he could make cavities vanish and turn amalgam fillings into gold through prayer. In 2012, Fran Sheffield of Homeopathy Plus! received the spoon for asserting the whooping‑cough vaccine was ineffective and urging people to use homeopathic remedies instead.
1 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards
Animals caught in absurd moments are comedy gold, and this award celebrates just that. While many wildlife photography contests showcase the planet’s beauty, the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards (started in 2015) spotlight the funny side of nature, welcoming both novices and seasoned photographers.
Viewing the winners is essential—2021’s champion features a monkey that appears to have injured his family jewels after landing on a cable (photographer Ken Jensen notes it’s actually a display of aggression). The 2020 winner shows a turtle giving the camera a decidedly rude middle finger. All finalists and winners are displayed on the official website.